An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Chapter 2.04
The morning took too long to arrive. The nightmare of the locker had cut through the sleeping pills, and I couldn't have any more. I just lay there sleepless, listening to the sound of the cars outside. The rain slowed and stopped just before dawn. I felt shattered. Therefore, the only responsible thing to do today was catch up on my rest, with a nice lazy morning as an incidental bonus. Unfortunately, dad knocked on my door around 11am.
"Morning," he said, though I could tell his cheerfulness was a front. "Um… can you please get up and get dressed quickly, Taylor?" he asked me.
I stared at him blearily, rubbing my eyes on my sleeve. "Gneargh?" I managed. Or maybe some other mess of syllables which might be made by someone running on almost no sleep.
"Something's come up at work," he said. "I'm meant to be off today, but… look, it's serious. And not in a good way."
"You could leave me at home?" I tried, trying to suppress an only slightly exaggerated yawn.
"I'm not really… uh, comfortable with that," he said, obviously picking his words with care. "You- you can take books, right? And just stay in the waiting room. But I want to be around you and… look, I just don't want to leave you alone, okay?"
I raised a hand in defeat. "Give me fifteen minutes to get up and dressed and stuff," I said, the yawn I'd been trying to suppress escaping. I tried honesty. "I didn't sleep well. Bad dreams."
My dad looked sympathetic. "Do you want to talk about it?" he tried.
"Not really," I said. "I… I just dreamed about the locker. And then I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep." I shook my head. "What am I meant to do? I… I was only in there for like an hour or two. I know that. I've spent longer dreaming of it than…" I bit down on my lip, trying not to shake. "It'll go away some time, right?" I asked. I coughed. "Now, if you'll excuse me…"
I stumbled through to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. In the Other Place, the floor was littered with broken tiles, and the light above the sink cast a particularly harsh and unforgiving white glare, which made my face look wan and sickly in the broken mirror.
This wasn't what I'd wanted to happen on my first night home. Fuck. I felt like shit and… God, what was even happening with Dad? He had his really-serious face on. I remembered he'd been talking about the riots and things when I'd been in the hospital, but I thought they'd died down. Had they flared up again?
I couldn't function like this. If something big was happening, I wanted to be awake to face it, not running off fumes and a few hours of staring at the ceiling… I sighed. Time to fix it.
My tiredness was an ugly little baby-thing with midnight blue skin and a pale, horse-like mask. It constantly screamed out a lullaby that made my eyes droop despite its dissonant voice. I envisioned it nailed to the wall with iron nails the length of my forearm, heard its song choked off, and felt immediately much more awake. Why hadn't I thought of doing this earlier? This way I could avoid the nightmares.
Though it might be kind of unhealthy. I'd need to see if I was just making myself ignore my fatigue, or I was actually no longer tired. I'd feel like such a fool if I dropped dead from sleep deprivation because it turned out that I was still physically paying for it.
I tapped the sink. If I only slept every other day, maybe I could be too tired to dream when I actually rested. That'd be good. And I'd have more time to do stuff. Well, I'd see. I wasn't sure yet that suppressing my tiredness like this was exactly safe. Drying my face, I left Cry Baby nailed to the wall, and went to get dressed.
It had stopped raining, and the clouds had cleared up during the night. Unfortunately, just meant that it had become bitterly cold, and there was ice on the sidewalks. The main thoroughfares had been salted and gritted, but I saw two crashed cars on the way to Dad's work. Someone had died in one of them. I shivered. I didn't want to know that. It made me think of Mum. I tried to put it out of my mind as Dad parked in the car park for the Dockworker's Union.
The union office was surrounded on all sides by the decaying industrial infrastructure of Brockton Bay. The streets had been built wide, to allow for fleets of trucks that had long stopped coming. Old cranes rose into the skyline like predatory insects. In the Other Place, they wept rust. Every pool of water I saw shimmered with iridescent layers of oil, and the surfaces were blackened and grimy. At least the blood rain was gone. It hadn't left so much as a stain, as though it had never happened.
Of course, according to everyone else, it hadn't.
There was someone waiting for my dad in the foyer. They were about the same height, but while Dad was a beanpole like me, the other guy was built like a brick wall. He had deep bags under his eyes, and he looked exhausted. "Sorry 'bout calling you in, Danny," he said by way of apology.
Dad sighed. "I can't say I'm happy, Cal, but from what you said on the phone…" he trailed off and shook his head, before glancing at me. "Taylor, just wait here," he said. He dug around in his pocket for change. "Get yourself something to eat from the vending machines," he added. "I'll try to get this done as soon as possible, but… you have a book in your bag, right?"
I nodded, pursing my lips slightly. Something was going on and I didn't know what. This had to be important if he was being called in like this, and everyone was being evasive in front of me. It was just a moment's thought to shift to the Other Place, before I paused. Was it really right to just casually spy on my dad?
No, it wasn't, I decided. I would show restraint, like I had before. Dad was off limits. I wouldn't abuse my powers like that. Putting my hands in my pockets, I slouched off to stare at the vending machine. Was I feeling in a chocolate mood? Urgh. I really didn't want to start the day with that for breakfast. And I wanted a proper lunch too. I was going to be healthier, I'd promised myself. Hmm. I really should start my new exercise regime.
I heard a muffled thump, and frowned, looking around. Now that I was listening for them, I could hear raised voices, just at the edge of audibility, from the room Dad and the other guy had gone into. I managed to keep a hold on my curiosity until the second thump. What on Earth was going on in there? I focussed, breathed out two twin butterfly-winged dolls, and sent one in to listen, while its twin repeated everything it heard.
"You don't think I don't fucking know that?" my dad snapped, his voice coming from the mouth of the chipped china doll. "But there's never any proof!"
I gasped, and then looked around nervously to see if anyone was paying attention to me. "That's really expensive," I said. That probably was one of the least convincing attempts to cover up surprise ever, but at least I'd made the effort. But what? What was going on here?
"Who needs proof? Remember? Tim now, Aaron Crikton when he tried to unionise Walmart, Yusuf from the Teamsters! Even when they find someone, it's always some petty ganger!"
"There's no proof, Cal," my dad grated. He sounded furious, but he seemed to have it – barely – under control. "Whoever's doing this, they win if we lash out."
"Whatever happened to the Dan me and Tim used to know in the old days!" Cal retorted. "He might die, and they killed his son! They win if we sit back and take it!"
"I know!" There was a pause, and I heard him panting. "I know," Dad said more quietly. "Godfuckingdammit. We can't win either way. Fuck it."
"I know, right?" Cal had also gone quiet. "Anyway."
"Yeah. The insurance stuff. I'll need to hold down the fort today. I'll go talk to his wife tomorrow."
"Yeah. There are other people we'll need to talk to, too. Without Tim around, that changes things."
"I don't want to even think about that. We can see where that goes at the next meeting," my dad said, so softly I could barely hear him. "Never mind. It's for later." He coughed, and took a deep breath. "Do I look calmed down?" he asked.
"Give it a few moments," the other man said. "Heh. Taylor's shot up like a weed, she has. I can remember when she was just yay-high. Takes after you there. Looks a lot like you, too." He paused. "How's she doing?" he asked, sounding awkward.
I could hear the shrug from my dad. "Better," he said tersely. "The doctors say so, anyway. Me… I don't even know. I thought I knew her and then it turns out all this stuff was happening with her and…" he sighed. "We're just taking it day by day. I don't even know what to say, half the time. But enough about that." I heard a door click. "Let's just get this over and done with."
I called the dolls back to me, and reinhaled them as my dad approached, before looking him up and down in the Other Place. His fire was almost out of control, straining and licking the ceiling. I winced, and took a deep breath. I wanted to help him – but it just didn't feel right to try to chain his anger. It felt… icky. Wrong.
"What's going on?" I asked my dad. He'd expect me to ask, and I wanted to see what he'd tell me.
"Tim… someone I've known for a long time, he's our treasurer, he's been shot. The police say it looks like it was a white nationalist gang," he said. "I'm sorry, Taylor, but I'm going to have to help deal with the insurance. And we'll have to go visit him in hospital, maybe today, probably tomorrow." His lips were thin. "You should remember Tim. Short, dark skin, glasses?"
It did ring a distant bell. I vaguely remembered people from Dad's work I'd seen over the years. "The one with the funny tattoo on his arm?" I hazarded.
Dad winced. "Yes," he said. "I should have guessed you'd remember that." He took a deep breath. "Anyway. Taylor, this is going to take a while. I'll give you some money. There's a diner just up the road, closer to the docks. Go get lunch. Stay close."
"And if I go somewhere else or something, I'll come tell you," I said quickly. I hadn't much liked the look of the place he suggested. I'd seen it on the drive in. It had been decidedly greasy spoonish. I was going to be eating more healthily than I had in the hospital. And if it took a long time, I could maybe go for a jog. Maybe not. The air was cold enough that my lungs would probably start hurting if I jogged. But I could give it a go, and if it didn't work out, I could at least walk.
He pursed his lips. "I'd prefer if I knew where you were," he said. "I'd wanted to spend today at home with you. A nice quiet day."
"I won't go too far," I said quickly. "If I even go. It depends if they do anything that I want, right?"
"Just… be safe," he said, wearily.
"I will," I promised him.
My breath steamed in front of me when I stepped out of the entrance. I rubbed my gloved hands together, and stuck them in the pockets of my coat. Wherever I went, I wanted something hot to drink. In a place with heating.
In the end, I did just go to the place he pointed out. Finding a seat, I ordered a coffee, and got started on Foucault's Pendulum. Reading slightly old books was always odd. Not really old books, but books which were just about old enough for the world to be very different, but still familiar. It was sort of like reading science fiction. I mean, I did intellectually understand that there had been such a thing as a world without capes and without the Endbringers, but reading about it always seemed strange.
And boy, was this book stranger than most. The foreword had mentioned that it was a translation from the Italian. Maybe I would have understood it better if I was Italian and got all the references. Probably not. The characters made all these complicated references to various conspiracy theories and – huh, I'd never even thought that a vanity publisher would work like that. It really seemed like things like that should be illegal. Like, it was basically fraud. Oh, and it was all flashbacks and… was it a parody of conspiracy stories? It was a bit – was literary the right word? Literary? Fancy? Not-written-to-be-funny? – to be a parody.
Leah was a very strange girl to read books like this for fun, I had to conclude. Mind you, I didn't put it down, so I was clearly a bit strange as well.
I snorted to myself. Yeah, just a bit. I only saw twisted monsters in a horrible hell-world when I used my weird parahuman talent. Barely worth mentioning.
Still, to spend my first full day out of a mental hospital sitting in a diner reading a book was nice. I didn't even see the Other Place once, because I was hungry and didn't want to see anything that would put me off my food. The last thing I wanted was to see that the waitress serving me had a fly's head or something. That would just lead to me thinking about flies and not wanting to eat anything she touched and probably feeling ill from the things I'd already had and then working myself into a worry about whether I was feeling ill from worry or because the food had been unsafe to eat in some way and… well, enough about that. No, I was just going to drink my coffee, eat and read.
And maybe spy on my dad. Just a little bit. But everything I heard from him was boring talk about insurance and I just stopped listening when he started talking to someone on the phone about coverage. I didn't like the implications that I'd heard from that first bit of conversation, though. They worried me. If people from unions were being killed… well, surely Dad'd have said something if he was in trouble, right? Wouldn't he?
I got back to my book.
An electric hum broke my concentration. I sighed, and looked up as the lights flickered and dimmed. It was 13:39 according to the clock on the wall, and still no call from Dad. And now this.
Another brownout. They were just a background feature of life in Brockton Bay. An annoying one. From what Dad had told me, the old power station down the coast at Red Beach hadn't been up to standards when it was built in the 70s, and the power company found it cheaper to pay the fines for failing to live up to regulations than actually do the full infrastructure rework that the city needed. There had been a Tinkertech powerplant built back in the early 90s to replace it, but that'd been wrecked by supervillains who'd stolen whatever thingie made it work.
I heard grumbling all around me. The television was fuzzing in and out, waves of static washing over the surface. I quickly glanced into the Other Place, but there was nothing more strange going on in the lipstick-scrawling-covered screen than usual. Oh, and the waitress was just a greyed, exhausted-looking walking corpse with threadbare clothes, which left me feeling rather better about the meal I'd just eaten. That just meant she was tired and overworked and didn't care, and probably had money problems. Which, you know, I'd kind of guessed from looking at her.
Thanks, power. Really perceptive there.
Well, I wasn't going to be getting another coffee while the power was playing up. I'd been silly enough to get a seat away from the window, too, so it'd be hard to keep on reading while the lights were flickering.
Oh, sure, I'd told my dad I'd stay here, but it wasn't far. And I had promised myself I'd get fitter. So I'd just go for a jog around the block while I waited for the power to come back on. I wouldn't go near any dangerous areas or anything like that. This wasn't the really bad area of the Docks, and I'd just do this until I could get back to reading. I put my book back in my bag, and paid my bill. The girl at the counter apologised for the power cut with a roll of her eyes, and I shrugged.
I bought a candy bar to go, and left, heading deeper into the Docks.
